“Thank you for coming to my presentation of learning. I am the expert on my own learning. I am also responsible and accountable for my own learning. You can expect me to give an honest evaluation of my progress. We will discuss my strengths and opportunities for growth. Thank you in advance for listening and for offering feedback that I can use to improve as a learner.”
As you know, I will be reflecting on the school year and how I have changed, also using the driving question: “How can you showcase evidence to demonstrate that PLP Success Behaviours have prepared you to advance to the next grade?”
My views, perspectives and habits have all shifted and I have grown with them. This year tPols will be a bit different, as it is noted in the driving question. I will still talk about my strengths and stretches but I will also be focusing on 3 PLP Success Behaviours. We were given a checklist to evaluate ourselves on what we show consistently, sometimes, and rarely, here are my answers:
The big three I will be talking about are Agency, Self-Regulation, and Preparation.
Agency
In this section, I will talk about my resilience, in the checklist I chose that I am consistent. To be consistent the criteria states: “Show resilience and persistence in the face of challenges and setbacks.”
I demonstrate this frequently with many aspects of my life but it especially shined when we did Destination Imagination this year. This year in DI we were assigned 2 grade tens per group and 4 grade 9s. This meant I had to become a leader for my group. Whenever a problem would arise, my group would look to me for answers. I had to be ready to face challenges head-on and be flexible with things that couldn’t be fixed.
One of my strengths is my positivity and my ability to always look for a silver lining even in difficult situations. Being optimistic is crucial to being a part of DI, as it can get very frustrating at times so having a positive mindset is important. Using a positive outlook it helped keep my team together and we kept pushing forward. This experience didn’t just highlight my resilience but also helped me see my growth in being a leader and assertive.
Self-Regulation
In this section, I will talk about my balance, in the checklist I chose rarely. As it says, I “Often get overwhelmed by commitments and find it difficult to manage balance between outside activities and school.”
The reason for this whole presentation is to admit and find within ourselves what we need to work on and I’m proud enough to say that balance is very difficult for me. This also stems from time management, which is something that I struggle with. I find it hard to find a sweet spot and if I do it doesn’t last very long.
We have done projects in the past to help with balance, for example, New Year New Me, but I haven’t found the best solution for me yet. I think that balance will always be something I will find difficult because life is full of mysteries that you can’t solve in advance. Even though I don’t think I can master this, I do think that I can get better at it. Some things that may help me are, doing assignments over courses of days instead of leaving it 1 or 2 days before it’s due. This is normally the case for smaller assignments and I think that if I try and break this habit I will do a much better job at trying to balance my life a bit more.
Doing this checklist made me realize that I need to regulate myself a bit better and make different decisions to reduce any distractions. This section was probably where I needed to focus on the most.
Preparation
In this section, I will talk about the difference between life in school and out of school. At school, I put consistently, “Comes to class with all materials, on time, and prepared to learn.” But for outside of school, I put sometimes, “Has a system to manage time and tasks but may struggle with consistency.”
In school, I do a good job at being ready to learn but I home I struggle a bit more. As I said in self-regulation, I need to focus more on time management, for example, instead of going on my phone for an hour I could check Showbie and do little bits of work over a few days. I sometimes can have a system with homework but I want it to be more consistent so I can be more productive in the time that I have.
In the project “Back to the Future” we learned about ourselves and different career paths. At the end of our project, we needed to have a 7-minute presentation ready where we had to pitch ourselves. It was kind of like Dragons Den or Shark Tank but instead of pitching a product you were pitching yourself. I had prepared a lot for this presentation and I’m really happy with how it went down. This was one of the projects where I used my time more wisely, I practiced the presentation multiple times and got a few peers to critique my work.
This is an example of when I did assignments over days instead of a few days before it’s due. My work showed how time and much effort I put into it and it will always be a project I will think about. Click here if you want to learn more about this project.
In conclusion, this year has been so important for me and seeing my growth as a learner. Using this checklist also helped me realize what areas that I need to work on. Reflecting on Agency, Self-Regulation, and Preparation has helped me tell the story of my strengths and stretches and let me highlight parts of my year. I’m proud of myself for being resilient and optimistic, even in tough times, but I realize that I need to work on time management and overall balance. I’m glad I can recognize what to improve on and I can’t wait to see what growth I’ll make in just a year. Thank you so much for listening!